The Fishing Village: Shenzhen Before 1979

Imagine standing on a bustling street in Shenzhen today, surrounded by glittering skyscrapers, electric vehicle charging stations, and drone delivery hubs. Now, press rewind—all the way back to 1978. The same spot is a muddy path between rice paddies. The only sounds are water buffaloes lowing, the splash of fishing nets, and the distant chatter from a village market. This was Shenzhen: a cluster of about 30,000 people living in riverside hamlets, fishing in the Pearl River Estuary, and growing lychees and rice on land that would soon become the most intense construction zone in human history. In this chapter, we step into that world. We’ll explore the geography, economy, and daily rhythms of a place that was chosen not for what it was, but for what it could become. We’ll unpack why this particular stretch of coastline—so close to Hong Kong yet so far from China’s traditional power centers—was selected as the laboratory for the country’s boldest experiment. And we’ll discover what “starting from scratch” truly meant when the “scratch” was a mosaic of fishing villages, fields, and a porous border. Get ready to time-travel. Your mission: see the blank canvas before the masterpiece was painted.

The Land and Its People: A Geography of Possibility

The Physical Landscape: Rivers, Hills, and Estuaries

To understand why Shenzhen was chosen, you first have to understand its land. Forget the maps of today with their metro lines and ring roads. In 1978, Shenzhen’s geography was defined by three key features: the Pearl River Delta’s intricate network of waterways, a series of low-lying hills running east-west, and a long, indented coastline full of natural harbors.

The area sat at the southern tip of the Dong River basin, where freshwater from the interior met the saltwater of the South China Sea. This created a brackish environment perfect for both aquaculture (farming fish and shellfish) and rice cultivation. The soil, while not the richest in Guangdong province, was sufficient for subsistence farming, especially in the alluvial plains around the Shenzhen River and Sham Chun River (the border with Hong Kong). To the south and east, low granite hills—like Wutong Mountain (then called “Five Tigers Mountain”) and Lianhua Mountain—rose gently, covered in banyan trees and bamboo groves. These hills were not majestic peaks but rolling barriers that shaped settlement patterns; villages clustered in the flat valleys between them, sheltered from typhoons.

This geography created a natural mosaic of micro-environments:

• **Riverine zones**: fertile for rice, home to water chestnuts and lotus roots.
• **Coastal mudflats**: ideal for oyster beds and shrimp ponds.
• **Hill slopes**: planted with fruit orchards (lychee, longan) and vegetable gardens.
• **Natural harbors**: like **Shekou** (Snake Mouth) and **Yantian**, where junks could anchor safely.

For a teenager in the 1970s, life was literally shaped by this terrain. Your world might be a village (村) like Bao’an (the county seat), Shajing (Sand Market), Xixiang (West Village), or Longgang (Dragon Ridge). Your family’s address might be “Third Team, Da’nan Village, Bao’an County.” The land wasn’t just scenery; it was your grocery store, your playground, and your boundary.

Interactive Element: Map Analysis *For Digital Edition:* Overlay a 1978 topographic map (showing rivers, hills, and village clusters) with a modern satellite view. Use a slider to fade between them. Notice how the modern city follows the ancient ridgelines and river paths—the infrastructure of the past became the skeleton of the future. *For Print Edition:* See fold-out map on page X. Color-code: blue = rivers, green = farmland, brown = hills, red = villages.

The Original Settlements: Not Just One Village, But Many

The name “Shenzhen” itself comes from a deep, marshy drain (zhen 圳) in the area of the same name. But calling it a “fishing village” is a simplification—it was actually a chain of about a hundred villages scattered across what are now the districts of Luohu, Futian, Nanshan, and Bao’an. Each had its own history, surname clan, and specialty.

Take Bao’an (宝安), the administrative center. In 1978, it was a walled town with a population of around 5,000. Its streets were narrow and dusty, lined with shops selling rice, salt, and hardware. The Bao’an County Government was located here, a modest compound of gray-brick buildings. Bao’an was the hub—the place where farmers brought produce to sell, where officials in blue Mao suits processed paperwork, and where the occasional truck from Guangzhou arrived with manufactured goods.

Contrast that with Shekou (蛇口), a coastal village of about 2,000 people. Life here revolved around the sea. Families owned small wooden fishing boats (*junks*). Women cleaned fish at the docks, dried shrimp on racks, and sold catch at the morning market. Shekou’s harbor was naturally deep, a fact not lost on the planners who would later turn it into China’s first modern port.

Then there was Xixiang (西乡), known for its lychee orchards. Every June, the air would smell sweet with ripening fruit. Villagers would pack lychees in ice (a luxury) and send them by boat to Hong Kong, earning much-needed cash. This cross-border trade—often semi-legal—was already the lifeblood of many border communities.

These villages were connected by dirt roads (often just dirt tracks), rivers (the main transport arteries), and footpaths. A journey from Shekou to Bao’an might take half a day by boat or bicycle. There was no public bus system. The Shenzhen Railway Station (built in 1911 as part of the Kowloon-Canton Railway) was a minor stop—a single platform where a slow train from Guangzhou might pause twice a day. For most, the world beyond the next village was distant.

Key Insight: Shenzhen wasn’t an empty wilderness. It was a densely networked rural society with its own social structures, economies, and connections—especially to Hong Kong. This existing human network would later become crucial for the SEZ’s labor force and informal business culture.

The People: Farmers, Fishers, and Border Crossers

Who were these 30,000 residents? They were primarily Han Chinese, with local dialects like Cantonese (in the west) and Hakka (in the east). Life was hard but rhythmic, governed by the seasons and the lunar calendar.

A typical teenage boy in 1978 might:

• **Help in the fields** after school: transplanting rice seedlings in spring, harvesting in autumn.
• **Join fishing trips** on weekends, learning to mend nets or pilot a sampan.
• **Attend a village school** (if lucky), where the curriculum emphasized Mao Zedong Thought, basic math, and Chinese characters—with no English taught.
• **Dream of Hong Kong**. The bright lights of the neighboring British colony were visible on clear nights across the Shenzhen River. Smuggling was a dangerous but common side hustle for young men—carrying watches, transistors, or fabric across the border for a profit. The border was a **porous, everyday reality**, not an impenetrable line.

Girls’ lives were often more constrained, focused on household chores, helping in the fields, and preparing for marriage. Yet many also participated in village production teams (生产队), the basic unit of collective agriculture. Their work was essential but rarely recorded in official histories.

Social structure was based on clan lineages. A village like Huanggang (in today’s Luohu District) was dominated by the Huang clan, with ancestral halls and strict rules about land use and marriage. Elders held authority. The People’s Commune system (established in the 1950s) had consolidated individual villages into larger administrative units, but the old clan ties remained strong beneath the surface.

Economic life was a mix of collective farming and **household sideline ind